UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #8

[Konstantin]

No one apparently recalls Suzy mentioning having lost any belongings over the weekend, but her colleagues do recall her being preoccupied with finding them on the Monday morning. Together with AL’s claim about never having visiting the pub, and the relief landlord’s claim that he found these items outside of the pub on the Sunday night, the evidence suggests they became lost - not stolen - on the Sunday, rather than the Friday.

There was a phone box just outside the pub right nearby the picnic benches where the pub temp landlord says he found SJL's diary, chequebook and postcard. So they could have dropped there if she sat down there to wait to use the call box on the Sunday after she had visited her parents. She may well have wanted to make calls out of the earshot of her flatmate. I think that's a good theory for how her items came to be there.

There are rumours but actually zero evidence that JC ever went to the PoW. It wasn't the sort of place SJL went to, it was a bit of a dingy old man's pub in 1986 by all accounts.

 

[RichardKimble]

There was a phone box just outside the pub right nearby the picnic benches where the pub temp landlord says he found SJL's diary, chequebook and postcard. So they could have dropped there if she sat down there to wait to use the call box on the Sunday after she had visited her parents. She may well have wanted to make calls out of the earshot of her flatmate. I think that's a good theory for how her items came to be there.

There are rumours but actually zero evidence that JC ever went to the PoW. It wasn't the sort of place SJL went to, it was a bit of a dingy old man's pub in 1986 by all accounts.

If the theory of flowers and champagne is JC then that's a place he's unlikely to visit also.

 

[WestLondoner]

I'm not sure it was a dodgy old man's pub in mid-86. MB, the full time landlord, told DV it had been radically done up and was taking good money. It was also used as a training pub, which argues that it was a bit of a model, rather than a dive.

AL said in a documentary around that time that he and SJL went to the pub on the Friday and she lost her stuff then. This cannot be true I'd they never went there, as he now says. Either way it seems clear she did go there, just maybe not with him.

The claim to have spoken to her on Sunday night and not knowing who rang whom is tosh, IMO. First, they'd been at the beach all day so why couldn't whatever needed to be discussed have been discussed then? And secondly, in 1986 you called landline to landline and you could tell the call was from a payphone from the background noise and the pips when money got low. How did either of them know where to reach the other unless both were at home?

For my money AL fibbed about all this to spare DL's feelings. SJL binned him on Friday and ignored him all weekend. If she spoke to him on Sunday it was to tell him to cotton on and stop bl00dy following her around; a call she woukd nit have wanted to make with Roger the Lodger eavesdropping.

DL's understanding of 'boyfriend' was almost certainly 'bloke she knows socially', not the 80s sense of 'sleeps with'.

 

[Konstantin]

I'm not sure it was a dodgy old man's pub in mid-86. MB, the full time landlord, told DV it had been radically done up and was taking good money. It was also used as a training pub, which argues that it was a bit of a model, rather than a dive.

That's very interesting. So SJL might have gone there socially then, perhaps not with AL. Especially as convenient for home.

The claim to have spoken to her on Sunday night and not knowing who rang whom is tosh

I've always thought that was AL bluffing because he was clearly in love with her or strong feelings and she'd seen him on Friday after him being away but apparently they'd not spent the night which tells you a lot about their relationship or lack of. Then she'd cold shouldered him all weekend.

Either there was no phone call and he'd said there was to spare himself the embarrassment of admitting he'd been dumped or to avoid the police thinking he had a motive to off her, or he knows exactly who called who. He couldn't have called her unless she was at home.